Thousands of Amazon workers have ended their days-long strike against the company, according to the Teamsters union. But tensions persist, with the union saying its efforts aren’t over.
“Make no mistake the Teamsters will never let up and workers will never stop fighting for their rights at Amazon,” a union representative said in a statement. “Stay tuned.”
Thousands of Amazon delivery drivers across a handful of states went on strike late last week in the thick of the holiday package season, with the strike ending on Christmas Eve. The Teamsters held protests outside at least 200 facilities nationwide, but workers were on strike at only nine separate locations, from Queens, New York, to San Francisco.
Amazon has insisted that none of its operations or deliveries were affected by the stoppage.
The union claims to represent 7,000 Amazon workers nationwide, or less than 1% of the company’s US workforce. Amazon is the nation’s second-largest private employer, with a headcount of 740,000 workers across 1,000 warehouses and distribution centers.
The protesting workers demanded higher wages and better benefits, pointing to the online shopping behemoth’s massive profits in recent years. Amazon posted solid profit growth in the third quarter, in part driven by strong e-commerce sales.
Striking workers have also complained of tough working conditions.
“The pay needs to be better. The health insurance needs to be better,” Thomas Hickman, 34, a delivery driver for Amazon in Georgia, told CNN previously. “We need better working conditions. If we do have 400-plus packages, we need someone to be a helper with us, to ride with us.”
But Amazon has refused to play ball, according to the union.
Amazon does not consider its drivers to be employees, even though they wear an Amazon-branded uniform, drive the company’s trucks and deliver only products bought on Amazon.com. Rather, the company refers to them as “Delivery Service Partners,” workers contracted through independent third-party companies.
“There are a lot of nuances here but I want to be clear, the Teamsters don’t represent any Amazon employees despite their claims to the contrary,” Kelly Nantel, a spokesperson for Amazon, told CNN in a statement previously. “This entire narrative is a PR play and the Teamsters’ conduct this past year, and this week, is illegal.”
While Amazon said most of the strikers shouldn’t be considered employees because they are drivers for contractors, it does recognize the workers based at its Staten Island warehouse and its San Bernardino, California, air hub as employees, though not as union members.
The workers in Staten Island voted in favor of representation by the Amazon Labor Union in April 2022. However, even though the National Labor Relations Board certified that vote result, Amazon continues to challenge it in court and won’t recognize the win by a union. Amazon also does not believe that a vote by union members to shift from being represented by the ALU to being affiliated with the Teamsters earlier this year was legally binding.
And while the Teamsters announced earlier this month that a majority of employees at San Bernardino signed cards saying they want to be in the Teamsters, there has been no formal vote held there.
Still, the Teamsters said the latest protest made sure its “message was heard loud and clear.”
CNN’s Chris Isidore and John Towfighi contributed reporting.
